Article

Rebekka Topholm
Rebekka Topholm 23 December 2021

5 Content Management Predictions for 2022

Global marketers are constantly evolving with the world around them. If the past two years were about responding to an unprecedented shock, 2022 is about keeping the digital acceleration in momentum, increasing customer engagement, and driving more leads online.

Disruption has followed since the dawn of the digital era — but it exploded in intensity starting in 2020.

As we move into 2022, the pandemic continues, and the demands of customers e.g. seamless cross-channel experiences, convenience and personalization are only growing stronger.

Businesses need to understand the trends and technologies that will influence the market in 2022 to seize the opportunities to scale.

1. Give Direct Answers with Voice-Search Optimized Content

The volume of voice-search queries per month will continue to get higher at a rapid speed as the use of Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and other non-screen search devices will increase. In fact, the global smart speaker market revenues grow to nearly 28 billion by 2022.

Market growth follows product demands and more advanced technology. Moreover, modern consumers are getting more mature and adapt to new technology faster than ever before. Therefore, voice-based devices and technologies are getting more normal each day, and from a consumer’s perspective, voice-search is a very easy way to get one quick answer to a question.

From the other side of the coin, you as a content creator need to be aware of how this affects your work. Voice searches are more direct and demand a quick answer without additional context. With that said, you need to create content fitting the needs of a voice search. Short, quick, and straight to the point. 

If web search gave you the option to browse the first 10 results, voice search only offers 1 to 3 options. Therefore, it becomes even more important to have your product data enriched and available to sales channels and marketplaces.

For this, a product information management (PIM) system comes in handy to make sure that you deliver the right product data that is required from the specific sales channel or marketplace.

2. Increase Buyer Choice Through Personalized Content Across all Channels

Understanding customers and meeting them in their preferred channel helps personalize their experience—and just as importantly, engages the customer where they prefer to interact with your business. 

Depending on your customer segment, you will have various sales channels at your table. However, even though your current customers might mainly include the older generations, you should consider looking into some of the trends that are foreseen in youth’s buyer behavior. Sooner or later, this younger generation will become your customer. 

Younger generations tend to quickly adapt to new channels—making purchases through social media, voice assistants, and virtual reality headsets, just to mention a few. 

Tailoring channels to customers also allows you to offer more inclusive experiences. For instance, did you know that 70% of sites are inaccessible to those with cognitive, visual, or hearing impairments? Expanding your channel strategies to other options, like voice assistants, your business is better suited to meet various customer demands.

3. AI, Automation, and Smart Machine to Engage Seamlessly at Scale and Frequently with Every Customer

The dream of having an authentic website that creates itself on the fly for each visitor based on contextual knowledge of that visitor can be a reality with AI, machine learning, natural language recognition, chatbot, voice assistance, etc.

Businesses are transitioning to technologies that allow previously ‘in-person’ interactions to be undertaken by machines. In the future, companies predict that 69% of the decisions they make during real-time consumer engagement across all channels will be made by smart machines. This includes a decision on what content to create as well - topics, formats, keywords, images, etc.  

In 2022, we will begin to realize the opportunity of an AI-driven content marketing strategy. AI will catch low-ranking content pieces and make you aware of good and bad performance. In other words, AI will begin to force us to reconsider what we create and why. 

By 2030, agility and advanced automation - probably enabled by AI will be the engine of customer experience, understanding customer expectations and delivering on them.

4. Content Marketing Turns into Content Selling

Companies will experience a greater recognition of the fact that creative and compelling content is critical for businesses to achieve genuine engagement with their audiences. Moreover, conversational content will be a trend that sets its foothold in the content portfolio.

This trend comes when marketers thrive at creating relationships and interactions between consumers and businesses more humanly.

Additionally, as consumers continue to explore new technologies and as we spend more of our lives digitally, new payment methods and purchase integrations will scale revenue, enabling increased convenience and engagement.

Content is a common thread through the whole sales and marketing funnel from increasing brand awareness, driving traffic, generating leads, and closing sales. In fact, the lines between sales and marketing are getting thinner every day. By 2022, content marketing will more likely be “content selling". If your content isn’t driving sales, then why are you creating it?

5. Creativity Builds Commerce Content in Cookie Less Future

We expect to see commerce content continue its explosive growth. This will become a well-established third revenue pillar for publishers alongside paywalls and advertising.

What's more, we foresee a rise in creativity, too. With the cookie less web world, businesses meet difficulties and constraints around tracking via the use of third-party cookies. This forced us to think in new ways to deliver relevant content to the right person at the right time.

A good start is to focus on the corporate visual identity and creative communications in various formats. For instance, from a content perspective, we will experience creators, editors, and publishers working with mainly written content turning it into compelling, convincible shopping content on video.

So, Where Does this Leave us?

More personalization, cross-functioning content, relevant formats, and voice-search optimized assets are among the content trends to watch for in 2022.

Besides, you must consider how to structure and create your content in a way that makes it highly adaptable whether the change comes from technology, audience preferences, or in your company’s business offerings.

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